Mary & Martha

Luke 10: 38-42

The incident of Mary and Martha gives us wonderful insights for a successful Christian progressing life. This meditation is aimed to be a deeper search for information from these verses and how better we may obey.

      1.       The fundamentals:

The primary message from this incident is what our priorities should be. Nothing else is important than bringing ourselves to the Lord’s feet and learning from him.

      2.       The Gospel

One aspect of the Gospel is that God loves us and wants to give us everything we need unconditionally. He is not bothered receiving anything from us. This unconditional love is also what we learn here. Every other religion wants us to work and earn salvation. Here, God gives us for free. All we have to do is sit at his feet and receive.

      3.       Serving the Lord

The illustration we learn from this incident focuses on the purpose of Jesus’ arrival to our homes. In this time, we do our best in making the Lord happy. We work, evangelize, do social work and make every effort to please him. God expects us not to please Him by serving, but receiving from Him. We should receive teachings from His word and obey. This makes Him happier and fulfills his purpose. Everything else is good, but just obeying than making human efforts is highly regarded as is the sole purpose of our Lord’s visit.

      4.       “Mary Also sat at the Lord’s feet”

The KJV Bible (and also the Greek originals) use the work “Also” in verse 39 meaning Martha was learning from the Lord, but Mary was continuously learning without getting bothered about other things like her sister. This continuous and steadfast devotion is mandatory for Christians. Just being in and out is meaningless.

      5.       “One thing is needed”

The human mind always leads us to the pursuit of many things that we think are real necessity. Like world peace, family security, financial stability etc. We worry and keep working hard to earn these. Jesus says that “ONE” thing is necessary. Every other thing isn’t. This one thing is our salvation which we get from the Lord’s feet by accepting Him as our only personal Savior and learning from Him.